Hackathon Fall 2016
About
The theme of the inaugural event was 'Choose Your Own Adventure' which had multiple meanings. Since this was the first meeting it was decided to have a theme that was open to interpretation. You could design a story where a player has to interact to make decisions on how to progress or one could make a text-based game with a physics twist. To go further with the theme, participants were allowed to make whatever they wanted!
The main portion of this hackathon occured over a weekend, but teams were allowed to work on it further to present to a general student population.
Projects
Details on some of the projects are listed below in no particular order.
The idea for this submission was a text-based mystery game ala Carmen Sandiego. A story was crafted in which the player is at a party in a mansion along with many famous physicists. Suddenly one of the party-goers is found dead and it is up to the player to search the house and decipher clues (with physics knowledge!) in order to identify the murderer. One of the key features of this game is the replayability: the murderer is randomized so it's different every time you play. There are also self-described funny easter eggs in the game.
This game was developed entirely with python and its creators would like to point out that only default python was written. No external libraries were used so the challenge was building a functioning game from scratch.
For this hackathon, we were challenged with designing an adventure. At the time of assignment, the building next to the Physics & Astronomy department was being torn down to make room for a second Physics & Astronomy department building. A natural adventure which would include some physics would be to get in on demonishing this building... in a fun way! We implimented some well known projectile motion equations of motion to simulate launching a trebuchet striking the building, assumed to be a few meters tall. THe user input initial speed and launch angle of the projectile. When it, an over the top nuclear explosion video plays over a photo of the building to be demolished. If missed, a series of monty python french taunter clips are played, one for each time you miss.
